This dead copywriter tricked you into brushing your teeth every day
I guess it’s safe to assume you’re brushing your teeth every day, right?
Why are you doing that?
Well, because you’re a mature adult who takes care of oral health and hygiene.
Orrrrrr because your parents were forcing you to do it when you were a little kid, and you were bitching and screaming “I don’t want to!”
But now you’re used to it and it’s just a part of your morning and evening routine.
That’s the right word: routine.
We do it without even thinking about it.
But what we don’t realize is that a big part of our routines -- of our daily behavior -- was actually created by marketers.
Why do we drink orange juice and think it’s healthy? Because of a marketer called Albert Lasker.
Why do we eat bacon for breakfast? Because of the “godfather of propaganda”, Edward Bernays.
Why do we wear athletic shoes even when not doing anything athletic? Because of Nike’s marketing campaigns.
Why do so many people STILL smoke cigarettes? Again, marketing campaigns.
Anyway, let’s go back in time.
The year is 1915 and only 7% (!!!) of Americans are brushing their teeth daily.
A toothpaste company Pepsodent goes to the best copywriter of the day, Claude Hopkins, and hires him to help them sell more of their toothpaste.
Like any copywriter worth his salt, he does some research before writing a word of copy. He finds some interesting things and says to Pepsodent something like:
“Why are you even in this business, with only 7% of people brushing teeth? But okay, you wanna sell more toothpaste, I’ll help you sell more toothpaste.”
His main idea: Get more people to brush their teeth.
And oh boy, did he do it.
After 10 years of running campaigns for Pepsodent, the number of Americans brushing teeth daily jumped from 7% to 65%, that’s almost 10x!
What did Hopkins do to change the daily behavior of tens of millions of people?
He got the readers to do a simple demonstration.
It went something like this.
Run your tongue over the front of your teeth. Feel that “film” on your teeth? That’s the debris and germs accumulating, which then decay your teeth. If you brush with Pepsodent, you remove that film.
That was the gist of the campaign.
And the beauty of it is that everyone has that film on their teeth, even if they brushed their teeth 5 minutes ago. And that simple “run your tongue over the front of your teeth” is so easy to do in literally 2 seconds.
In the ads, he was also showing beautiful women with glowing smiles, and mentioned that you can get "Brilliant Teeth", "Teeth Like Pearls" and "Clear, Sparking Teeth”.
And to top it off, he offered a free 10-day supply of Pepsodent. All you had to do was mail the coupon in and you’d get the toothpaste in your mailbox a few days later.
In the first 3 weeks, Pepsodent was overwhelmed by demand and exploded across America right after the initial free sample ad campaign launched.
They literally couldn’t make enough toothpaste -- that’s how successful that ad was.
This campaign (and similar ones) ran for 50 years, long after Claude Hopkins died.
Of course, no need to say that this also made Pepsodent the dominant player on the market, by far.
Competitors tried to steal their ads.
Not just tried. They did steal their ads and they did increase sales by a lot.
But all the competitors had one problem: People were buying their toothpaste, but always switching to Pepsodent after the first order. They couldn’t get repeat buyers.
They did a test group to try and find out why that is.
The reason? Pepsodent had a minty flavor that made their mouth tingle. Without that tingle, people thought the toothpaste wasn't working.
So they stole the minty flavor too and were finally able to compete with Pepsodent.
But by the time everyone started stealing their ads and the minty flavor, 10 years had gone by and Pepsodent had owned the category all that time.
And it stayed the biggest brand for decades.
It was bought by Unilever back in 1942 and it still exists today.
So yeah, maybe your parents told you to brush your teeth every day….
….but it all started with this brilliant marketing campaign by the copywriter Claude Hopkins.
And if you want to learn a few of his tricks, you should read his most famous book, Scientific Advertising.
It’s really good.